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THE ROLE of CHINA and the BRICS PROJECT Arturo OROPEZA Esta revista forma parte del acervo de la Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual del Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la UNAM www.juridicas.unam.mx http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx exican M Review aw New Series L V O L U M E VII Number 1 THE ROLE OF CHINA AND THE BRICS PROJECT Arturo OROPEZA GARCÍA* ABSTRACT. BRICS is an exogenous invention that was institutionalized as a convenient geopolitical market strategy, which favored each of the five BRICS countries to a greater or a lesser degree. As such, it is now a political group without deep roots and its future will be conditioned by any dividends it might yield over the coming years as a result of political, economic and social correla- tions and divergences. KEY WORDS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. RESUMEN. El grupo de los BRICS es una invención exógena que se institu- cionalizó bajo la conveniencia de una estrategia geopolítica de mercado, que en mayor o menor grado ha favorecido a cada uno de los cinco países que lo conforman. De esta manera, hoy en día es un grupo político que carece de raíces profundas y cuyo futuro estará condicionado por los dividendos que pueda pro- ducir en los próximos años como resultado de sus correlaciones y divergencias políticas, económicas y sociales. PALABRAS CLAVE: Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. FRAMEWORK ...................................................................................... 110 II. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 110 III. THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF CHINA WITHIN THE BRICS GROUP ........... 113 IV. GOODBYE NEO-LIBERALISM? WELCOME MARKET SOCIALISM? ............ 116 V. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GOLDMAN SACHS? ................................ 130 * Doctor of Law and Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico]. Foreign arbitrator for Brazil under the Mercosur [Common Market of the South] Dispute Settlement System. Author of several works on Economic Law and Economic Integration. 109 Esta revista forma parte del acervo de la Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual del Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la UNAM www.juridicas.unam.mx http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx 110 MEXICAN LAW REVIEW Vol. VII, No. 1 I. FRAMEWORK The concept of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) first appeared in late 2001, as the result of a prospective study by a private firm (Goldman Sachs). According to the study, the levels of growth these countries had attained in previous years, the firm stated that these countries were des- tined to reach high economic levels by the end of the 21st century. Since then, some opinions have come to support the economic growth of BRICS coun- tries. But at the same time, other voices have questioned the truthfulness of this prediction. After the initial speculations, it was not until eight years after this prospective study that the BRICS countries decided to meet for the first time in 2009 to discuss the essence of their association and explore different possibilities for working together. Is the Goldman Sachs prospective study actually based on facts? Is it true that BRICS countries will become top world economies by the mid-21st cen- tury? Will the United States and other Western countries passively allow this to happen? What consequences will arise from this new partnership and how will they affect global society? These and other questions have surfaced with the BRICS project. However, beyond the strength or limitations of this idea, Mexico, Latin America and Western countries in general cannot afford to lag behind, especially in view of the vague information on what is currently hap- pening in Eastern Asia. This mistake has already led them to ignore China’s exponential development with all the implications this entails. Along this line and moving beyond the support of this proposed grouping, the main purpose of this work is to help weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the BRICS hypothesis so as to opportunely clarify the nature of this pre- diction within the context of the interests of a global society, which now more than ever is interested in everything that happens around it. Therefore, this article discusses the framework of a global economy cur- rently under construction. It also tries to explain the important role of China in the BRICS group. Finally, it gives some general considerations of Gold- man Sachs’s irreverent proposal and predictions. II. INTRODUCTION To speak of BRICS is to speak of the future. Hence the complexity of em- barking on a topic within the framework of the beginning of a century. Just like the two centuries before, this one challenges us, not so much to construe what will follow, but to understand what is happening today. We are experi- encing ever-growing globalization that leaves us without answers to most of the questions that have now emerged and needed harmonious coexistence. We are witnesses to the end of the political and economic certainties that in Esta revista forma parte del acervo de la Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual del Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la UNAM www.juridicas.unam.mx http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx THE ROLE OF CHINA AND THE BRICS PROJECT 111 multiple ways attest to the unresolved transformation. This in turn translates into a discontented global society that wonders about individual solutions every day. To a certain extent, we have become hostages of our own success. For that reason, to speak of BRICS, or rather, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa as a group,1 requires that we not fall into simplistic observa- tions of the past or global speculation of the present, focusing only on the displaced and the winners. The intense integration that all countries cur- rently forming part of the global community are witnessing, be it welcome or imposed, does not allow us to simply observe the scene of transformations, the results of which greatly depend on the possible success of a committed world society. To know whether this is China’s century or not, if we are witnessing the decline of the United States or if India, Russia or Brazil will replace Japan, Germany or France in the first half of the 21st century is not the information global society needs at this moment. What matters is to know the reasons for this shift, how things will be rearranged, and to what degree these changes will affect or benefit the shared inheritance of certain non-renewable assets that now more than ever belong to global society and can only be passed on collectively to future generations in the medium and long-term. Thus, the success of BRICS countries in the 21st century, as well as that of any other nation, can only be understood within the framework of a future global soci- ety that bears in mind and satisfies the requirements of sustainability for all its members. This approach was clearly not taken in the 18th century when the Watts and Cartwrights of the early Industrial Revolution invented steam engines and cotton spinning machinery. This marked the creation of the global soci- ety and was the most palpable and successful period of an unstoppable race that had just commenced while paving the way for its own self-destruction. Nor did Great Britain take this approach in using new technologies to aggres- sively assert its domination in 1815 at the battle of Waterloo and imposed a type of coexistence and economic exploitation upon the new global world in such a way that it came to control 25% of the land and population at that time. Great Britain and the early industrial countries did not know or even wonder about the effects this form of “development” and exploitation could or might have in the future. In 250 years, the consequences are seen in record concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, much higher than those present 800,000 years ago and rapidly approaching the levels to have supposedly existed 15 million years ago.2 During the “century of Great Britain,” so called because of Great Britain’s leading position in the Indus- 1 South Africa was not integrated into the bloc until April of 2011 and is therefore not included in the analysis of this work for editorial reasons. 2 LAURENCE C. SMITH, EL MUNDO EN 2050: FOUR FORCES SHAPING CIVILIZATION’S NORTH- ERN FUTURE (2011). Esta revista forma parte del acervo de la Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual del Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas de la UNAM www.juridicas.unam.mx http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx 112 MEXICAN LAW REVIEW Vol. VII, No. 1 trial Revolution, industrial participation grew from 2% in 1750 to 23% in 1880. In this same year, Europe jointly amassed 62% of further developing the industrial world.3 By the early 20th century, a less satisfied global society with ever-increasing demands and still suffering the same afflictions found in the early 19th century was wondering whether the 20th century would be the century of the United States and the downfall of Great Britain. Moreover, questions began to arise as to whether we were on the road to the “American- ization of the world”4 or if the world would join to defend itself from “colos- sal American business.”5 Ironically, in the early 21st century this same global society, more distressed than ever and with the same maladies from before, now asks itself whether this century will be that of China or of BRICS. Global society is also wondering who is winning or losing in view of the multiple alliances
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